What is the difference between green and red tea?!
What is the difference between green and red tea?
Answers:
Nice question. People tend to get confused about this.
All tea comes from Camellia sinensis tea plants and contain caffeine. Herbal tea, roobois and Yerba mate are not, properly speaking, tea, and do not contain caffeine.
One way Chinese people classify tea is according to the colour: white, green, red, oolong, yellow and compressed.
What they call the red tea actually correspond to the fully oxidised tea, or the regular tea in the Western world where you add milk and sugar.
It is red because when you brew it, you get a red liquor!
What the Chinese people call black tea, actually refer to the post fermentation, like pu-er, where tea is sun-dried and stored to ferment naturally for many, many years.
So when you hear about red tea next comes, just think of it as another the regular tea, but instead of being produced in India or Sri Lanka, as it usually is, it be Chinese.
Hope it helps.
Julian
Source(s):
http://www.amazing-green-tea.com/green-t...
Green tea is camellia sinensis and it is picked tea leaves that are dried. Black tea is smoked or cooked and often flavored.
There are four basic types of true tea: black tea, oolong tea, green tea, and white tea.
The red tea you are referring to is probably Rooibos and it is not a proper camellia sinensis tea but comes from the Red Bush: Rooibos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rooibos...
Green tea is regular black tea that has not been fermented. It gets black in fermenting.
Red tea is a tea made from the Rooibus plant from South Africa.
Other red tea is made rom the more mature oxidizd leaves from the tea plant and is fermented. In the Orient, this is called red tea, in the West it can be called black tea.
they're made with different kinds of leaves
Renate is correct above. Green tea comes from a specific plant, Camelia Sinensus. Black tea, white tea, and ooolong teas come from the same plant, but the difference is in the processing of the tea leaves.
There are also tea blends which have spices added, or fruit oils added. Some examples are Chai and Earl Grey tea.
Red tea could be anything from Roobis and Honeybush teas. These teas normally don't have caffeine which is why people like them. Roobis for example grows in Africa and has known medicinal properties, but are not true teas. It is known as an herbal tea. Other herbal teas include Chamomile, spearmint, fruit teas (probably just dried fruit like lemon or apple or apricot).
All teas are beneficial in all sorts of way and I think the best way is to enjoy them all.